Adelaide Festival Nelken 2016

During the Adelaide Festival I had “an experience”, we can call it, of Pina Bausch Nelken. I survived the performance.

Pina Bausch is a highly regarded modern ballet/dance choreographer who produces polarising work.

It was amazing to see such a complex piece performed in Adelaide, normally reserved for major European and American theatres, by Bausch’s own company.

Nelken was a range of experiences all in one piece. Though some of it was beautiful, some of it was ugly and disturbing, some weird, some cleaver it was performed at a very high standard and as a piece it flowed and worked.

As an experience I think was wonderful, though I wouldn’t be able to enjoy too many complex and at times uncomfortable experiences like that too often.

Too complex to explain here, and even for dance critics and writers I think summarising it would be very hard, but it was high class on all levels.